I woke up this morning thinking about math. Specifically, this question, which came to me as I was thinking about sums of positive integers: Can a given positive integer x be written as the sum of y consecutive positive integers? We’ll call x y-compostable if so, as I’m feeling green today. Can we find a formula to determine if x is y-compostable for any given x and y?

I recently had an interview for a DevOps role in which I was asked the following: what is the runtime of insertion into a heap? The answer, for the record, is O(log n), but I have a more important answer, which is: who cares?

I mentioned in my last post a rule of biology and computer science: simple rules lead to complex behavior. I demonstrated this with Conway’s game of life, but there are numerous other solid examples, including the weasel program, a means of simulating how minor mutations in genetic code can lead to major evolutionary strides.

…or at least it won’t be in 30 years. Which begs two obvious questions: 1. What is AI? 2. if ChatGPT isn’t AI, then what is it?

When I was a kid, I would sometimes click through Steam profiles, moving through each user’s highest-level friends until I eventually reached the highest-level user on Steam. What surprised me was that, almost 100% of the time, no matter who I started with, I would end up at that highest-level user. This was before I knew how to program, but even then, I imagined making some kind of tool to measure the degrees of separation between any Steam user and the Steam elite. In May 2021, I wrote that tool, and yesterday (January 17 2023), I improved it significantly.

Today I’m going to talk about a subject that is near and dear to my cold, dead heart, but is also entirely useless: video game frag movies. The frag movie likely got its start in one of the early Quake games, or perhaps Unreal Tournament. It’s hard to say. Regardless, I will be focusing on Quake movies for the most part, as I have more knowledge in that area, and I consider the games in the Quake series to have some of the most technical skill possible for a first-person shooter game.

Go to the Frick gallery. Get an egg and cheese from a deli, preferably on a bagel. Get a slice of pizza from a dollar pizza place. If you want something a bit higher quality, head to Rosetta Pizza on 14th–it’s good, but without the lines and price of Joe’s or John’s. Visit a park—Washington Square Park, Inwood Hill Park, Henry Hudson Park, Central Park, Prospect Park, any park, really. Go to Coney Island, see the amusement park, walk the boardwalk, check out the wreck of the Quester I, a home-built submarine. Avoid Times Square at all costs. Go to the Weekender in Queens, it’s a combo billiards hall/Bhutanese restaurant. Visit the Staten Island boat graveyard. See the La Monte Young Dream House, if you like the avant garde. See an interesting movie at the IFC center, or the Film Forum, or the Angelika. Get an empanada at Mama’s Empanadas, a pakora at the Punjabi Deli on Houston, pierogis at Veselka, and a curry-rice at Go Go Curry. See the Van Cortlandt House Museum. Visit Brighton Beach. Every Thursday, Paddy Reilly’s has a live Irish music session, anywhere from 3 to 8 musicians at the bar. Avoid Times Square at all costs. Get a bagel with cream cheese from a good bagel place—Bagels on the Square, Murray’s Bagels, etc. See a play at the Public Theater (some of them are good, some are bad, some are meh). Walk through the New York Botanical Garden. Catch a concert at Lincoln Center. Listen to live jazz at the Blue Note. Avoid Times Square at all costs. Get mofongo at La Casa del Mofongo up in Inwood. If you’re a zoo person, check out the Bronx Zoo. See the Dyckman Farmhouse. And most important of all, avoid Times Square at all costs.

If you’re reading this, I managed to fork this site from my Open Source Software Development class. I’ve wanted to had a personal website for some time, but have never really had the time to set one up myself. Now, I do.